In this interview on Status host Rania Masri talks to Stellan Vinthagen about his his recent book A Theory of Nonviolent Action - How Civil Resistance Works.
Stellan Vinthagen is a Professor of Sociology and a scholar-activist. Vinthagen is the Inaugural Endowed Chair in the Study of Nonviolent Direct Action and Civil Resistance and Director of the Resistance Studies Initiative at The University of Massachusetts, Amherst, U.S.A.. He is also a researcher in his native Sweden at The Department of Social and Behavioral Studies, University West, and at The School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg, where he is leading the Resistance Studies Program. He is an academic advisor to the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC) with a PhD in Peace and Development Research from University of Gothenburg (2005).
Rania Masri graduated from North Carolina State University with a doctorate in forestry, and a Master of Environmental Management from Duke University. She did what anyone would do with such degrees: she focused on social, environmental, economic justice; she joined the Institute for Southern Studies (also in North Carolina) as the Director for the Southern Peace Research and Education Center and continued her work on organizing for justice. In 2005, she decided to return to her birthplace, so she became a professor of environmental science at the University of Balamand in Lebanon. In 2014, she joined the newly-formed Asfari Institute for Civil Society and Citizenship at the American University of Beirut as its Associate Director. In addition to her work on environmental justice and holistic environmental analyses, she is perhaps most well-known as an organizer and public speaker against the sanctions on Iraq (1990-2013), and, fundamentally, against the ongoing apartheid and injustice throughout the land of Palestine.